18 ms·

Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

415 points by praveenscience 6y ago

martindbp 6y ago
Well, personally I don't sit staring at a screen, I watch movies, play games, talk to people, build stuff and learn new things. You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you?
- Andhurati 6y ago
  Do books do the same damage to your eyes as screens?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Probably? It's not like screens shoot death rays. It seems very likely that looking closely at patterns within a rectangle has the same effects whether it's made of paper or electronics.
    - TLightful 6y ago
      Depends which game you're playing.
    - ping_pong 6y ago
      CRTs used to emit X-rays, so they actually did shoot death rays.
      - jayd16 6y ago
        Any ray is a death ray given sufficient dosage.
        SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
        And that was the day the Care Bears let their stares full power be known.
    - outworlder 6y ago
      They are backlit though, that's a big difference. Not sure if any issues would be caused by this.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        Is it a big difference? If you take the reverse of ray tracing, why would a light beam of given intensity and wavelength act differently on my retina because it was directly transmitted vs reflected?
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Backlit screens are brighter than a book under typical indoor lighting conditions. (Although this doesn't really support the original point, because the canonical alternative of going outside is much brighter than anything you do indoors.)
  - sethammons 6y ago
    do screen damage your eyes?
  - givehimagun 6y ago
    Can you provide evidence of where screens cause damage to eyes? My ophthalmologist shared with me that there is general irritation but we haven't been able to prove that screen times degrade eye sight over time.
    - snazz 6y ago
      Staring at anything too close to your eyes for a long period of time isn't good for them. If you are taking appropriate breaks, my understanding is that screen time is harmless.
      - vzidex 6y ago
        I've got the same understanding - I asked my ophthalmologist about it as well because my vision is already quite bad and I'm a computer engineer. For breaks, she recommended the "20/20/20 rule" - focus your eyes on something at least 20 feet away, for 20 seconds, every 20 minutes of screen usage.
        snazz 6y ago
        Yes, I've gotten that recommendation as well. Apparently more natural light exposure may also decrease the risk for nearsightedness. Having a window near my computer monitor makes it easy to remember to look outside whenever I'm not actively looking at the screen.
        givehimagun 6y ago
        I think there is a nuance in reducing screen time versus increasing natural light exposure.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    Do screens do damage to your eyes? The article lists some side effects, but I wouldn't consider that any sort of eye damage, and it's certainly not permanent.
  - thisiszilff 6y ago
    Hey, do you have specific examples of the damage you're concerned about? I've been reading up about this a lot as it is something that concerns me, but so far most of what I've says that longterm damage is mitigated by taking regular eye breaks (ie, starting at something 20+ feet away every 20 minutes for 20 seconds) & getting enough sleep (giving the eyes time to properly rest). Are these mitigation strategies insufficient?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - olodus 6y ago
    Is that really supported by empirical trials? A short search online seems to point to that being somewhat disputed. I'm all for contradictory evidence though if you have some I missed. Yeah sure a screen is emitting light which maybe makes it worse for the eyes to look at in some ways and situations than a paper page, but "looking at light" is almost an oxymoron - isn't that what eyes do?
    - groby_b 6y ago
      Eyes usually look at diffusely reflected light, which has a different impact than direct light. A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 (I'm not sure how much bearing this actually has on eye health, this is just to illustrate how looking at a monitor and at a piece of paper is significantly different)
      - TremendousJudge 6y ago
        >A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 Why does it hurt my eyes to look outside after a while looking at a screen in a well lit room? (the sun is not directly visible, just buildings, trees and sky)
        atomicnumber3 6y ago
        Because the sun is an enormous sphere of hydrogen-helium plasma with a core that's undergoing fusion just due to gravity. Even indirect sunlight is still a very large amount of light and energy. I don't mean to sound flippant, but I think sometimes people forget just how insanely energetic stars of all sizes are.
        TremendousJudge 6y ago
        But GP's point was that a screen is much brighter than a sunlit surface. You can't both be right, or I'm missing something.
      - 6y ago
  - pintxo 6y ago
    probably yes. At least with [1] tpart of the problem is (very simplified) focusing too long on objects too near (book, screen, ...) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
      There's always been a strong correlation between near-sightedness and reading books or looking at screens in childhood and early adulthood, and it was assumed for a long time that it was because of what you described (focusing on objects too near), but the latest research suggests something much more interesting is happening. Children who spend a couple hours per day outside have extremely low rates of near-sightedness, so they think there's something about the eyes being exposed to direct sunlight that's necessary for them to grow properly.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    Does that matter? Running damages your knees. Playing tennis damages your elbow. Throwing a ball damages your shoulder. I do the thing I love while staring at the screen. If it damages my eyes that's the price I pay. I'm not going to stop doing it.
  - geebee 6y ago
    No idea, but I'm not sure it's material to whether "staring at books" is a good description of reading.
  - ergocoder 6y ago
    Yes, it does, especially when reading in poor lighting and poor posture. It turns out the best way to not damage an organ is to not use it...
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Screens haven't damaged your eyes for a long time. That was only true on the old CRT displays, which literally shot high frequency EM at your eyes.
  - squeaky-clean 6y ago
    If you believe my parents then all the years of reading books at night with almost no ambient light would have destroyed my eyes.
- literalanyone 6y ago
  I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Yeah me too. Anecdotally with my two children, they make huge educational jumps every time we increase their screen time. Screen time for us was playing games with an educational value and watching TV with at least some educational value. Recently we've started letting the five year old watch TV purely for entertainment, and the three year old sometimes watches too, but even then, both of them suddenly got a lot better at storytelling and coming up with their own original stories. So even "pure entertainment" seems to have educational value for the kids. The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend. That seems to be a good balance (although under the current conditions that's flexible if the screen is for an online class).
    - jrochkind1 6y ago
      You started out I was expecting you to be very liberal with 'screen time', especially agreeing with the GP who seemed the same. But: > The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend I think that's actually limiting screentime more than most US households, you aren't actually on the "no need to limit screentime" side at all!
      - jedberg 6y ago
        It's important to note that we are night owls. The kids have TV basically from 7pm (when I turn on Jeopardy regardless of sunset) until they go to bed around 11pm. And during the current situation, sometimes they go to bed around 1-3am. So they actually get a lot more screen time than most of their peers.
        noir_lord 6y ago
- nixpulvis 6y ago
  You can make it out to be whatever you want. But there is a physical difference between a screen's light emissions and the light perceived from paper. I've always been curious exactly how much different, but anyone claiming otherwise is suspect in my eyes.
  - Footkerchief 6y ago
    Your intuition is correct. Even if they have the same apparent color, two light sources can have drastically different spectra, which is perceptible. Some info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
- osrec 6y ago
  Funnily enough, I remember talking to a historian who said centuries ago, reading a book was considered "mindless entertainment", much as we think about our smartphones now. Eventually, reading evolved into being considered something generally "smart" people did.
  - carierx1 6y ago
    I'd love to read up more on that! Any links to literature on the topic?
  - logosmonkey 6y ago
    Many were quite opposed to books and have been throughout history. This is a fun read https://www.historytoday.com/archive/reading-bad-your-health https://www.historytoday.com/archive/reading-bad-your-health
  - hackmiester 6y ago
    I'd also love to read more about this, similar to the sibling comment from carierx1, who appears to be hellbanned.
    - yesenadam 6y ago
      > carierx1, who appears to be hellbanned. If you read their 1 page comment history, there's dang explaining "We've banned this account." and why.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    I hung out with some Vietnamese Zen buddhist monks on a monastery for a few days, and I was surprised to find that they viewed most fictional novels as mindless entertainment as well. Books with obvious educational value and religious texts were fine of course, but spending a few hours reading a novel would be lumped into the same general category as spending a few hours binging a Netflix show, so they did it sparingly.
- fsociety 6y ago
  Such a good point. I had a small existential crisis watching programmers on YouTube/Twitch because I was focusing on the sounds of the keyboard typing and realizing that they are sitting in front of a screen typing for hours on end and how pointless it was. The second part of my crisis was that I was no different. After a few months of dealing with this I remembered that actually they are engaging with an entire world, and so was I. Rhetoric is so stupid sometimes.
  - ironmagma 6y ago
    Never heard it put so plainly, that’s awesome.
  - karatestomp 6y ago
    I find seeing video of myself using a computer downright horrifying. I look like that? A good chunk of every day? Yikes. I mean I don't stop, because money, but I'd love to be able to take weeks- to months-long breaks from screens.
- gfxgirl 6y ago
  I totally agree with you. I also think we might want to compare. I suspect 150 years ago most people stared a shovel 34 years of their life or a clothes washing bowl etc..
- coldtea 6y ago
  >You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Well, ultimately, it is...
  - martindbp 6y ago
    Of course, but nobody ever says this. Except when reading was a new thing.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Mostly because nobody (statistically) spends too much time reading books. And because books have (on average) more substantial content than social websites and other such uses of time, so that's a better tradeoff. That said, some people can (and do, more so in the past) over-read, to the detriment of their social life or even to their health...
- filoleg 6y ago
  Fully in agreement with your take on this. One small clarification, however. >You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? In our day and age, you wouldn't. But this was definitely a thing in 1800s (regarding books) and in early 1900s (regarding newspapers). Using very similar excuses to rant about those, as the excuses being used today regarding screens too. And even earlier, in Ancient Greece, tons of prolific philosophers were strongly opposed to writing and books as a concept, as they believed that writing things down and learning from that (as opposed to oral learning) was eroding abilities that relied on memory (which parallels really well with people currently complaining about search engines removing the hard need for memorizing things). However, knowing this only makes your original point stronger.
- chpmrc 6y ago
  Where were you when my parents kept telling me "get off that computer"? :'(
- jccc 6y ago
  This is an excellent point (sincerely), but in addition there is quite a bit of difference in what is required of a reader "staring at paper" vs. many of the couch potatoes staring at their various screens. Probably HN is packed with better than average active users of screens than the general population.
- throwaway_USD 6y ago
  >You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Actually there is a colloquialism for that since the early 1900's: "Nose in a book" To your point no one actually has their nose in the book.
nsxwolf 6y ago
Drooling too? Or just staring? How about "looking at", "watching", "reading", or just "using"?
chadlavi 6y ago
speak for yourself, some of us are definitely above average >_>
avgDev 6y ago
Average Adult Will Spend 60% of Their Existence With Their Eyes Open.
scottLobster 6y ago
So a few minutes ago I wrote code for a company, producing economic value. Last night I kept up with family, maintaining healthy personal relationships. Right now I'm engaging in intellectual discussion of major issues with other people. And last night I watched an episode of Mr. Robot, engaging my brain with a stimulating story. And yes, sometimes I just look at animal gifs on imgur. I see no problem continuing any of this for 34 collective years.
- gowld 6y ago
  How much of that time was caring for your eye health so you don't go blind early?
  - scottLobster 6y ago
    I'm 32 and needed glasses for the first time last year, just mild nearsightedness which runs in my family, and I'm actually doing better than most (my mom and sister both needed glasses as teenager). I eat healthy/exercise and use dark-mode themes where available to minimize glare. That's it's for eye health. I wonder if the negative association of eye health to screen time is less about the screens and more about high blood pressure brought on by being sedentary. High blood pressure absolutely destroys the eyes over time.
  - sinity 6y ago
    You don't go blind from staring at a screen. Claims otherwise are the same as 5G conspiracy theories. Photons are photons. You might get issues from focusing at the same distance all the time. Or that theory about dopamine may be true - but if anything, screens are an improvement over things like paper books. And it applies to adolescence anyway. And nearsightedness is not anywhere near going blind.
    - shrimp_emoji 6y ago
      Bruh long axial length stretches the retina and detaches the vitreous jelly faster from the back of the eye since eye volume keeps increasing (you see this as flashes of light), putting you at risk for retinal detachment, which very much leads to blindness. :v I live in constant fear of it (though chance is smol). And I only played WoW for like 2 years .w.
fgnewsom 6y ago
GAVIN NEWSOM NEEDS TO GOTO JAIL! FUCK HIM!
mchusma 6y ago
Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite knowledge and possibility.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  And will use that infinite potential to binge watch Friends for the 11th time.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    I'll have you know this is a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine household, and we are on our 12th rewatch of the Dominion War, tyvm.
    - pintxo 6y ago
      If Netflix ever adds Spin City to their catalogue I will be in trouble.
      - dvtrn 6y ago
        Let me tell you how much productivity I got back when they took Frasier off last year.
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        Newsradio for this guy
        cableshaft 6y ago
        I have a folder of the entire series of Newsradio that's been played in the background (while I do other things, I don't even watch it, just listen)... sooo many times. Corner Gas is the only other show I've played as often.
      - sergiotapia 6y ago
        watching newsradio here, with rpcs3 classics on the second monitor
volune 6y ago
The medieval peasant spent how much time staring at dirt?
- groby_b 6y ago
  Few of them stared at brightly glowing dirt, though. And few of them continually stared at dirt a foot or two in front of their faces. There's debate how much damage that difference causes, but pretending there's no difference is an unhelpful approach.
  - throwaway8941 6y ago
    Tone down your brightness then? I use heavily customized dark themes absolutely everywhere, and my screen is hardly brighter than dirt. I have no problem looking at it for 30+ hours straight (though I don't do this anymore for other reasons.)
- acituan 6y ago
  Hominids spent 7 million years evolving on that "dirt" they stared at.
jliptzin 6y ago
This was already true for people I know who were watching TV all day since the 70s
nemo 6y ago
I used to spend a lot of time in book/magazine/paper reading. Now I read off screens mostly. 34 years of my life spent reading would be time well spent regardless of the medium.
derekp7 6y ago
This article is about the effects of eye strain, not the overall mental health of looking at content on a screen. With that in mind, what is it about a screen (emitted light) that is worse than outdoors reflect light? One item I can think of, is that looking at something with reflected natural light, the iris contracts based on the total amount of light hitting it. Whereas a screen may be brighter than the ambient light in the room, causing more of a point source of light to hit the retinas that would normally happen (which is why I've always found it more comfortable to watch TV with some other light on in the room vs. the room in total darkness).
- 1e-9 6y ago
  It appears that the lack of violet light contributes to myopia[1]. There is abundant violet light outdoors. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09388-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09388-7
- manmal 6y ago
  Screens are optimized for energy efficiency, so their emissions are restricted to a narrow range of visible frequencies. They don’t even really cover the whole range of colors, but mix them by combining RGB, which isn’t the real thing. Eg you can make something looking like violet light by mixing blue and red, but it’s not the same thing as the „real“ violet. Sunlight, however, is a wild mix of broadband EM emissions across basically the whole spectrum, as you‘d expect from a glowing ball of plasma (halogen bulbs are actually similar in that regard, they need and do have a UV filter). About a third of the sun’s emitted energy hits the earth’s surface as near infrared light, and then there is UV etc. Near infrared light is very beneficial, the mitochondria in our cells can increase their energy output as a direct consequence of receiving photons in that frequency range. There are lots of studies that showed improvement of many health conditions following near infrared or red light therapy. I wouldn’t be surprised if NIR light helped prevent myopia too.
  - M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
    would it help to set your screens to a grayscale setting?
econcon 6y ago
Important thing is, people don't just stare at screen. Many of them achieve smth else too. For example, last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of the word on screen. Helping them turn waste plastic into 3D printing filament: https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-cheap-6c908bb09922 https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...
- acituan 6y ago
  > last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of the word on screen You've spent time with a simulation of those people, their voices lossily compressed with a biased frequency response, their images projected through a non-eye lens on a 2D surface, their heads bigger and closer than you would have in real life, while rest of their bodies hidden, with hundreds of milliseconds delay between interactions. Don't get me wrong, it is a very convincing and useful simulation for many purposes, but it is a simulation nonetheless. We might have overlooked this previously, but we will slowly be gaining an understanding of the effects of sole social interaction coming through videochat. I know for some, no matter how many zoom calls they do a day, it doesn't come close to creating the same relational satiety.
  - malwrar 6y ago
    Speaking personally, most of my good friendships growing up (and even now) were with people online and they feel perfectly fulfilling and real to me. I've been really surprised to hear people (who seem to have been forced into interacting with folks online because of covid) start popping up claiming that online interactions aren't real and are somehow invalid or inferior, as your post seems to imply. I would have thought the presumably largely computer geek HN crowd would be full of folks with similar experience.
    - acituan 6y ago
      > they feel perfectly fulfilling and real to me That is the whole point of a simulation. Hyper-palatable food, cocaine, porn etc. they also feel good and even hyper-real in our nervous systems in the short term, but that’s not a good way to judge if they pose long term complications. Though, I’m not saying video chat is necessarily a hyperstimulus, we don’t know yet. > claiming that online interactions aren't real and are somehow wrong I’m not saying it is wrong, and in the absence of real thing it is the rational thing to do. But thinking that it is the real thing is kidding ourselves and to the extent it replaces real life interactions, it could have long term harm. I know this is not an exact comparison, but we have already seen this with uni-directional audio-visual entertainment replacing real relationship time. We feel like our favorite youtubers, podcasters, netflix protagonists etc are our friends, or at least relationally worth investing time in (otherwise we wouldn’t consume them). Same might go with the 50 people around the world we videochat.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
varshithr 6y ago
If you are in IT, or any knowledge worker for that matter, do we even have a choice?
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
  e-ink monitors?
mr_berna 6y ago
Does staring at two screens at the same time count double? At work as an iOS developer I look at two computer monitors, an iPad screen and a phone screen. When I watch TV at night I'll look at the TV and my phone. I'm sure I can get my count really high.
- XCSme 6y ago
  It might actually be better, as you keep changing focus.
redsymbol 6y ago
Aaaand now I feel the sudden urge to get away from this screen and go walk through some trees. I'll see ya all later.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  I'm an ape man i'm an ape ape man no i'm an ape man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo
onion2k 6y ago
I'm happy to be above average at something at last.
mattlondon 6y ago
13 hours a day on average? That seems quite high to me. Assuming you sleep 8 hours, that only leaves 16 other hours for potential screen time of which 13 we are apparently looking at a screen. Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left. So of all of our waking hours, we spend 13/15.5 = 84% of every minute we are awake looking at a screen? 50 seconds of every 60 seconds staring at a screen? Seems high to me.
- MrZander 6y ago
  I can easily see myself hitting 12+ hours a day. 8 hours every day at work, then an hour of TV, then a few hours on my PC at home doing whatever. Plus, using my phone probably adds up to a decent little chunk. Weekends might drag the average down a bit though, spend much less time in front of a screen on Saturday/Sunday.
- karatestomp 6y ago
  I bet I'm around 12-13 hours more days than not. Maybe higher. And my phone addiction/dependence is moderate compared to some so it probably comes in a distant 3rd after laptop (easily #1) and TV (all movies, shows, and video games combined) > Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left. Laptop on the dresser/counter playing Youtube. Phones are waterproof—read news or catch up on morning messages in the shower. Laptops that aren't giant bricks and have battery life good enough that you aren't constantly hunting for an outlet and towing your power supply around, plus (even more so) smartphones, have changed everything. Also depends on how they're counting screen time. Kinda like TV-watching stats. My parents leave their living room TV on probably 15+ hours a day. Does that mean they're "watching TV" if they're making lunch (good view of the TV from the kitchen) but half paying attention to the TV? Or I've come over and we're talking but the TV's on and you (or at least I) can't entirely ignore it?
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  I agree. I track my screen time on my computer and mobile phone. I feel like I have too much screen time, but there's no way I could consistently hit 13 hours of screen time per day, unless maybe I put TVs around my house to use as background viewing while I do other work. Even if I spend 10 hours at the office, it's a challenge to get over 7 hours of screen time logged unless I actively avoid all discussions, meetings, and eat lunch at my desk.
ipnon 6y ago
"If children get outside enough, it doesn't matter how much they study they do. They don't become myopic," said Ian Morgan, researcher at Australian National University.[0] "Researchers say kids and teens need to get sunlight during the critical years of their development while their eyeballs are still growing. "The mechanics of how sunlight protects their eyes are not clearly understood. One theory suggests that sunlight triggers the release of dopamine in the retina; another speculates that blue light from the sun protects from the condition. "The solution is simple. Have kids "spend more time outside, have less demands (from) the schools and relax a bit," said Seang Mei Saw, professor of epidemiology at the National University of Singapore." [0] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/05/asia/myopia-east-asia/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/05/asia/myopia-east-asia/index.h... edit: quotation marks
- karatestomp 6y ago
  Meanwhile we put 5-6 year olds in kindergarten classrooms with UV-blocking windows all day, for about 9 months during the part of the year with the least sunlight available, and we've cut recess time down to almost nothing, and schools increasingly don't send kids outside if the weather's anything other than perfect. At my kids' school they don't even have indoor recess if they keep them in! They just watch a damn movie. WTF. Of course there was some stupid educational fad that led them to remove all the toys from lower-grade classrooms to make room for "learning centers" (I gather this has happened more or less state-wide), so I guess if the gym's not available they can't really do indoor recess anyway, not that it helps their eyesight either way. And this is a very highly-ranked school for our state. 1.5 hours of recess daily minimum or bust for 3rd grade and under, I say, and I think that's not quite enough, really. Screw this 30 minutes crap. Know how I can guarantee my kids have behavior problems at home? Coop them up inside all day. Know how I make a day run smoothly? Make sure they're outside running around at least a couple hours while the sun's up. Then consider that they're giving a bunch of them nearsightedness on top of definitely creating behavioral and learning problems. It's crazy.
  - ajmurmann 6y ago
    I think it's all a side effect of the treadmill that society is putting everyone on. Between globalization and automation there are fewer good jobs that more people are competing for. Either you end up with what used to be a lot of money or way too little. Till you "made it" you are constantly at risk at slipping off the treadmill and into the "way too little" group. Especially in the US. May this be reality or not, it's the experienced reality for many. We feel so much pressure to give our kids a head start which results in this rat race starting earlier and harder. I think this is just collateral damage from that shit going wrong. I'm so glad I was a kid in the 80s when playing outside was still normal.
patrickcteng 6y ago
So, as a child my mom always insisted on me reading with lots of lights turned on. She claimed that reading the dark causes short sightedness and etc. Now, as an adult, I find that I have my screen's brightness turned up way more than my peers. For example, although it's currently very sunny right now in LA, I have my brightness turned up 100% on my 16" MBP. Though, in the evenings, it's more comfortable at 3 or 4 steps down from 100%. I can't help but to wonder -- did she condition my eye to be less sensitive to light and have thus slightly ruined my low-light vision?
- kingbirdy 6y ago
  Why wouldn't you have your brightness at 100% if it was sunny? You need the backlight to be bright to avoid it being washed out by sunlight. It would be weird if you said you used 100% brightness in the dark, but that's perfectly reasonable when it's sunny.
stevebmark 6y ago
Part of how myopia works: When your peripheral vision is in focus too much, because something is close to your face like a screen, your eye (which grows on its own, without brain involvement), is told to grow longer to to help reduce the over sharpening of the world it thinks it has. This happens in developing humans, at some point in adulthood it's suspected this stops (although some people see worsening myopia past the typical age range where it stops).
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
  would it help to keep your phone or monitor further away?
  - stevebmark 6y ago
    Having less focus in your peripheral vision might help slow myopia progression, so possibly. However wearing glasses and contacts automatically add more focus to peripheral vision, signaling the eye to grow. So moving something further away from your face while wearing glasses or contacts may have less of an effect. Having periods of blurry vision, like looking at something far away for some time without glasses or contacts, may be beneficial in that it may signal the eye to become less football shaped to help correct for the blurriness it now is experiencing. However I haven't seen any evidence this can reverse or improve myopia, rather this just seems to slow its progression.
    - veddox 6y ago
      > Having periods of blurry vision, like looking at something far away for some time without glasses or contacts, may be beneficial in that it may signal the eye to become less football shaped to help correct for the blurriness it now is experiencing. I literally just had that yesterday, and was wondering what it was. My eyes have always been very good, but I have been a bit worried of late after a few such blurry episodes...
      - stevebmark 6y ago
rafaele 6y ago
I wonder if they count staring at "n" screens for 1 hour as "n" hours.
qubex 6y ago
The Onion was way ahead (as usual): https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-waking-hours-spent-staring-at-glowing-re-1819570829 https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-waking-hours-spent-sta...
Ididntdothis 6y ago
Just my personal experience: i definitely notice my eyesight getting worse and my eyes getting tired when I look at screens for a while. Worst are phones , then iPad , then laptop. TV causes me the least strain. I think it may have to do with the viewing distance or the background light. When I don’t look at a screen for a few days while on vacation my eyesight gets much better.
jedberg 6y ago
Protip for everyone, since I've done a lot of research on this: If at all possible, cut the blue from your screen at all times. I use flu.x [0] and even during the day I set my color temp to 5800K instead of the standard 6500K. You won't notice the change much, but it will make a huge difference on how tired your eyes get. I also go down to 1850K at night (candlelight basically) to both ease strain on my eyes and not mess up my sleep. It makes a noticeable difference. [0] https://justgetflux.com https://justgetflux.com
- nsilvestri 6y ago
  I've had sunset-synchronized f.lux/redshift for 7 or 8 years now. Turning on redshift during work revealed I had pavlovian conditioned myself into getting sleepy when the blue light goes away.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Hah! Never thought about that side effect. I did both at the same time so never experienced that. Good to know.
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  I set mine to 3800K for 24 hours a day. Even during the day under florescent lights and an open window, if I have to toggle it off for any reason it feels like my eyes are being stabbed with tiny knives. I don't know about the sleep stuff (is that hard science yet?) but I personally definitely staved off eye strain and dry eye issues with f.lux and no other changes.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    > I set mine to 3800K for 24 hours a day. Sometimes when I travel to the other side of the planet but don't update my laptop clock, it goes into "night mode" midday. I can use it but I find it jarring with the natural light. > I don't know about the sleep stuff (is that hard science yet?) They have links to studies on the flux page [0] although I'm not sure how much of that is peer reviewed or if the sample sizes are big enough. I know that it makes a difference for me. My sleep quality went way up when I started using flux, and it goes down when I look at screens without it too late at night (like my not-so-smart-TV). [0] https://justgetflux.com/research.html https://justgetflux.com/research.html
jrochkind1 6y ago
Oh, I can totally beat that and do way more than 34 years.
ttizya20 6y ago
phd's will spend 5 years starring at paper
aupchurch 6y ago
These stats always freak me out when you extrapolate it over the long term. The average adult will also spend 2 years commuting or an entire year of their life sitting on the toilet. Lot's of wasted time here people. I think this also shows the power of what we can accomplish by spending 10 minutes a day doing something.
- maerF0x0 6y ago
  It can be quite difficult to convert random time savings into valuable time. 1) Is marginal free time actually converted to value (eg, Quality study time vs TikTok infinite scrolling) 2) Can Marginal free time be chained into valuable blocks (saving 1 minute commuting such that you're 2 more minute earl y for 30 appointments, you cannot chain that into a 1 hour study block. Edit: I will say Ankidroid has helped me get some value out of random deadspace though.
- woobar 6y ago
  If they sit on the toilet while staring at the screen, what bucket these years are assigned to? I.e. these extrapolations could result in multiples of your lifespan.
- kazen44 6y ago
  why would spending time on the toilet be wasted time? actually, sometimes, doing practically nothing is very valuable for one's state of mind.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I’d avoid the toilet simply due to avoid increasing risk of hemorrhoids.
nbj914 6y ago
seems low
GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
Some good tips to prevent myopia: - 30/30/30 rule: Every 30 minutes look at something 30 feet away for 30 seconds - Take regular walks outside: it will lower your blood pressure, and expose your eyes to violet light - ensure brightness of environment closely matches brightness of screen to prevent eye strain
napster4lyfe 6y ago
time well spent, imo
ashleshbiradar 6y ago
"screen time" is too broad a term and is too often described as something bad. But we need to understand screens are more like papers, and what we consume off the paper is what matters.
austinshea 6y ago
Staring is an embarrassing word for this person to have imposed upon the actual study. Science journalism is a real problem.
JSavageOne 6y ago
Eye strain is a serious problem and actually becoming a bottleneck for my productivity. Flux and dark-mode everything are mandatory, and I recently bought blue-light filter glasses and can't stare at a computer screen without them anymore. I had been reading ebooks on my phone out of convenience, but I stopped due to the eye strain and will revert back to using the Kindle. If you spend the majority of your life staring at a screen, don't take your eyesight for granted. As you age, it will deteriorate, and it's really not fun, especially when your career/livelihood depends on you being in front of a screen.
- hrktb 6y ago
  I think we are all in the same boat. For me switching from reading to hearing wherever the option makes sense helped a lot. Basic news coverage is fine in podcast form, audiobooks work fine for non fiction (going at 2x or 3x speed doesn’t kill the atmosphere) and it makes a good excuse to exercise while listening.
ryeguy_24 6y ago
Haven't we also gained 34 years in longevity in the last 100 years? So, net net we are good? :) More seriously, what types of activities did screens replace? Was it talking to other people? Physical activities/labor? Reading? Nothing?
- srl 6y ago
  I know your first comment is mainly in jest, but... https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-expectancy-united-states/ https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-... For white folk in the US, even the life expectancy at birth (arguably an inflated metric) hasn't increased by 34 years since 1900. For all people in the US (basically everywhere else, too, I think), that ~30-40 years is dominated by infant/youth mortality getting driven hard towards 0.
matthewfelgate 6y ago
We spend 34 years of our lives staring at computer screens. The rest of the time is just wasted.
- standardUser 6y ago
  Those sound like the first lines of a movie I would watch.
sunstone 6y ago
Formerly the average adult spent 34 years staring at text on the printed page.
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
Pfft. Amateurs.
jayroh 6y ago
Ugh, I did not need to see this today :(
- scollet 6y ago
  Ironic
abstractbarista 6y ago
Good thing I started out super far-sighted. If anything, my vision has improved with time focusing on close screens. :P
ngcc_hk 6y ago
Collecting info, react to info, organise info, communicate info etc. Otherwise might as well say we look for our life. It is not staring at. It is something else.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Can we quantify the "net screen time" once we subtract away from activities that took up time but have since been replaced/optimized by automation? But leaving that aside, the 34 years figure is understating the true time spent. That figure is referring to 34 years of 24-hour days. If we subtract 8 hours a day for sleep, it is actually 52 years of our waking hours.
OMGCable 6y ago
I read this, and wanted to put my phone down. I failed.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
golemotron 6y ago
I don't think that's true. Eventually, we'll have implants.
KerryJones 6y ago
While this article touches on eyesight, it seems like it's quite a myopic view of the issue (see what I did there? ;) But seriously, we spend over half of our "healthy years" staring at a screen? This should be begging deep philosophical questions - How do you want to spend your life? - When you look back at your life, how do you want to have used your time? - What is important to you? Some questions I struggled with when I went on a sabbatical was "what makes me feel alive, really alive?" Ironically, my answer for many months was, "I don't know, but it's not staring at a screen." Many other people's answered things like "rock climbing", "sky diving", "going dancing", and I think those are pretty decent answers, but mine settled on "anything that makes me grow". I also thoroughly spending time with other people in real human-to-human interaction. This feels like a huge slap-in-the-face wakeup call.
- Arbalest 6y ago
  A big component is surely from work. In which case, how does the philosophy extend to take into account the fact that people are in offices working?
  - sexy_seedbox 6y ago
    We'll all be healthier after Capitalism collapses.
  - KerryJones 6y ago
    Yeah, I think this is an important question. I think some of it will be inevitable, but I don't think we focus much on "decreasing screen time"... when so many companies (facebook, google, et al) get money from people spending more time on screens (advertising). There's no incentive for corporations to spend less time looking at screens. The few companies that do promote that -- such as REI... are outdoor companies. Which could lead you to a really pessimistic thought that even the co-op companies are really just profit motivated (I don't believe this, but there is the correlation)
pknerd 6y ago
And programmers?
etxm 6y ago
That fucking sucks.
M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
has anyone seen endmyopia.org? a friend of mine suggested it because he said he was able to perform “eye exercises” to improve his eyesight. He said it wasn’t perfect, but he no longer needs glasses.
- Azametzin 6y ago
  I just created an account just to answer you. Yes, endmyopia.org is great. The same way we develop myopia, we can revert it naturally in 99% of the cases. I was really skeptic at the beginning, but if you participare in the forum, read a lot and follow thousands of people taking part of the process, you will belive it for sure.
sizzle 6y ago
If the average adult spend 34 years staring at screens, what would us tech workers average?!
throwaway9482 6y ago
Average adult will spend 31 years of their life lying on the bed If we want to be pessimistic and reductionist there’s many other ways to do this too
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
OP: "Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens" Comment: "And for 33.9 of those years, it will be at things that are not work related..."
- ycombinete 6y ago
  I'm not sure about you, but 6-8 of those 13 hours of my day are spent working.
rurban 6y ago
Better than staring in books as before. Imagine the bok giving feedback to you or allowing communication.
yosito 6y ago
I've spent 34 years staring at screens since February.
deg4uss3r 6y ago
If this was "Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at books" would that also be a bad thing? To me and my work/reaserch/fun it's the same...
mvkel 6y ago
100 years ago the average adult (who dealt with information as we do today) probably spent 25 years of their life staring at paper. It’s the content, not the medium, that matters.

Well, personally I don't sit staring at a screen, I watch movies, play games, talk to people, build stuff and learn new things. You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you?

Andhurati 6y ago
Do books do the same damage to your eyes as screens?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Probably? It's not like screens shoot death rays. It seems very likely that looking closely at patterns within a rectangle has the same effects whether it's made of paper or electronics.
  - TLightful 6y ago
    Depends which game you're playing.
  - ping_pong 6y ago
    CRTs used to emit X-rays, so they actually did shoot death rays.
    - jayd16 6y ago
      Any ray is a death ray given sufficient dosage.
      - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
        And that was the day the Care Bears let their stares full power be known.
  - outworlder 6y ago
    They are backlit though, that's a big difference. Not sure if any issues would be caused by this.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Is it a big difference? If you take the reverse of ray tracing, why would a light beam of given intensity and wavelength act differently on my retina because it was directly transmitted vs reflected?
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Backlit screens are brighter than a book under typical indoor lighting conditions. (Although this doesn't really support the original point, because the canonical alternative of going outside is much brighter than anything you do indoors.)
- sethammons 6y ago
  do screen damage your eyes?
- givehimagun 6y ago
  Can you provide evidence of where screens cause damage to eyes? My ophthalmologist shared with me that there is general irritation but we haven't been able to prove that screen times degrade eye sight over time.
  - snazz 6y ago
    Staring at anything too close to your eyes for a long period of time isn't good for them. If you are taking appropriate breaks, my understanding is that screen time is harmless.
    - vzidex 6y ago
      I've got the same understanding - I asked my ophthalmologist about it as well because my vision is already quite bad and I'm a computer engineer. For breaks, she recommended the "20/20/20 rule" - focus your eyes on something at least 20 feet away, for 20 seconds, every 20 minutes of screen usage.
      - snazz 6y ago
        Yes, I've gotten that recommendation as well. Apparently more natural light exposure may also decrease the risk for nearsightedness. Having a window near my computer monitor makes it easy to remember to look outside whenever I'm not actively looking at the screen.
        givehimagun 6y ago
        I think there is a nuance in reducing screen time versus increasing natural light exposure.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Do screens do damage to your eyes? The article lists some side effects, but I wouldn't consider that any sort of eye damage, and it's certainly not permanent.
- thisiszilff 6y ago
  Hey, do you have specific examples of the damage you're concerned about? I've been reading up about this a lot as it is something that concerns me, but so far most of what I've says that longterm damage is mitigated by taking regular eye breaks (ie, starting at something 20+ feet away every 20 minutes for 20 seconds) & getting enough sleep (giving the eyes time to properly rest). Are these mitigation strategies insufficient?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- olodus 6y ago
  Is that really supported by empirical trials? A short search online seems to point to that being somewhat disputed. I'm all for contradictory evidence though if you have some I missed. Yeah sure a screen is emitting light which maybe makes it worse for the eyes to look at in some ways and situations than a paper page, but "looking at light" is almost an oxymoron - isn't that what eyes do?
  - groby_b 6y ago
    Eyes usually look at diffusely reflected light, which has a different impact than direct light. A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 (I'm not sure how much bearing this actually has on eye health, this is just to illustrate how looking at a monitor and at a piece of paper is significantly different)
    - TremendousJudge 6y ago
      >A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 Why does it hurt my eyes to look outside after a while looking at a screen in a well lit room? (the sun is not directly visible, just buildings, trees and sky)
      - atomicnumber3 6y ago
        Because the sun is an enormous sphere of hydrogen-helium plasma with a core that's undergoing fusion just due to gravity. Even indirect sunlight is still a very large amount of light and energy. I don't mean to sound flippant, but I think sometimes people forget just how insanely energetic stars of all sizes are.
        TremendousJudge 6y ago
        But GP's point was that a screen is much brighter than a sunlit surface. You can't both be right, or I'm missing something.
    - 6y ago
- pintxo 6y ago
  probably yes. At least with [1] tpart of the problem is (very simplified) focusing too long on objects too near (book, screen, ...) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    There's always been a strong correlation between near-sightedness and reading books or looking at screens in childhood and early adulthood, and it was assumed for a long time that it was because of what you described (focusing on objects too near), but the latest research suggests something much more interesting is happening. Children who spend a couple hours per day outside have extremely low rates of near-sightedness, so they think there's something about the eyes being exposed to direct sunlight that's necessary for them to grow properly.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  Does that matter? Running damages your knees. Playing tennis damages your elbow. Throwing a ball damages your shoulder. I do the thing I love while staring at the screen. If it damages my eyes that's the price I pay. I'm not going to stop doing it.
- geebee 6y ago
  No idea, but I'm not sure it's material to whether "staring at books" is a good description of reading.
- ergocoder 6y ago
  Yes, it does, especially when reading in poor lighting and poor posture. It turns out the best way to not damage an organ is to not use it...
- jedberg 6y ago
  Screens haven't damaged your eyes for a long time. That was only true on the old CRT displays, which literally shot high frequency EM at your eyes.
- squeaky-clean 6y ago
  If you believe my parents then all the years of reading books at night with almost no ambient light would have destroyed my eyes.
literalanyone 6y ago
I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?
- jedberg 6y ago
  Yeah me too. Anecdotally with my two children, they make huge educational jumps every time we increase their screen time. Screen time for us was playing games with an educational value and watching TV with at least some educational value. Recently we've started letting the five year old watch TV purely for entertainment, and the three year old sometimes watches too, but even then, both of them suddenly got a lot better at storytelling and coming up with their own original stories. So even "pure entertainment" seems to have educational value for the kids. The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend. That seems to be a good balance (although under the current conditions that's flexible if the screen is for an online class).
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    You started out I was expecting you to be very liberal with 'screen time', especially agreeing with the GP who seemed the same. But: > The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend I think that's actually limiting screentime more than most US households, you aren't actually on the "no need to limit screentime" side at all!
    - jedberg 6y ago
      It's important to note that we are night owls. The kids have TV basically from 7pm (when I turn on Jeopardy regardless of sunset) until they go to bed around 11pm. And during the current situation, sometimes they go to bed around 1-3am. So they actually get a lot more screen time than most of their peers.
      - noir_lord 6y ago
nixpulvis 6y ago
You can make it out to be whatever you want. But there is a physical difference between a screen's light emissions and the light perceived from paper. I've always been curious exactly how much different, but anyone claiming otherwise is suspect in my eyes.
- Footkerchief 6y ago
  Your intuition is correct. Even if they have the same apparent color, two light sources can have drastically different spectra, which is perceptible. Some info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
osrec 6y ago
Funnily enough, I remember talking to a historian who said centuries ago, reading a book was considered "mindless entertainment", much as we think about our smartphones now. Eventually, reading evolved into being considered something generally "smart" people did.
- carierx1 6y ago
  I'd love to read up more on that! Any links to literature on the topic?
- logosmonkey 6y ago
  Many were quite opposed to books and have been throughout history. This is a fun read https://www.historytoday.com/archive/reading-bad-your-health https://www.historytoday.com/archive/reading-bad-your-health
- hackmiester 6y ago
  I'd also love to read more about this, similar to the sibling comment from carierx1, who appears to be hellbanned.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    > carierx1, who appears to be hellbanned. If you read their 1 page comment history, there's dang explaining "We've banned this account." and why.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  I hung out with some Vietnamese Zen buddhist monks on a monastery for a few days, and I was surprised to find that they viewed most fictional novels as mindless entertainment as well. Books with obvious educational value and religious texts were fine of course, but spending a few hours reading a novel would be lumped into the same general category as spending a few hours binging a Netflix show, so they did it sparingly.
fsociety 6y ago
Such a good point. I had a small existential crisis watching programmers on YouTube/Twitch because I was focusing on the sounds of the keyboard typing and realizing that they are sitting in front of a screen typing for hours on end and how pointless it was. The second part of my crisis was that I was no different. After a few months of dealing with this I remembered that actually they are engaging with an entire world, and so was I. Rhetoric is so stupid sometimes.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  Never heard it put so plainly, that’s awesome.
- karatestomp 6y ago
  I find seeing video of myself using a computer downright horrifying. I look like that? A good chunk of every day? Yikes. I mean I don't stop, because money, but I'd love to be able to take weeks- to months-long breaks from screens.
gfxgirl 6y ago
I totally agree with you. I also think we might want to compare. I suspect 150 years ago most people stared a shovel 34 years of their life or a clothes washing bowl etc..
coldtea 6y ago
>You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Well, ultimately, it is...
- martindbp 6y ago
  Of course, but nobody ever says this. Except when reading was a new thing.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Mostly because nobody (statistically) spends too much time reading books. And because books have (on average) more substantial content than social websites and other such uses of time, so that's a better tradeoff. That said, some people can (and do, more so in the past) over-read, to the detriment of their social life or even to their health...
filoleg 6y ago
Fully in agreement with your take on this. One small clarification, however. >You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? In our day and age, you wouldn't. But this was definitely a thing in 1800s (regarding books) and in early 1900s (regarding newspapers). Using very similar excuses to rant about those, as the excuses being used today regarding screens too. And even earlier, in Ancient Greece, tons of prolific philosophers were strongly opposed to writing and books as a concept, as they believed that writing things down and learning from that (as opposed to oral learning) was eroding abilities that relied on memory (which parallels really well with people currently complaining about search engines removing the hard need for memorizing things). However, knowing this only makes your original point stronger.
chpmrc 6y ago
Where were you when my parents kept telling me "get off that computer"? :'(
jccc 6y ago
This is an excellent point (sincerely), but in addition there is quite a bit of difference in what is required of a reader "staring at paper" vs. many of the couch potatoes staring at their various screens. Probably HN is packed with better than average active users of screens than the general population.
throwaway_USD 6y ago
>You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Actually there is a colloquialism for that since the early 1900's: "Nose in a book" To your point no one actually has their nose in the book.

nsxwolf 6y ago

Drooling too? Or just staring? How about "looking at", "watching", "reading", or just "using"?

chadlavi 6y ago

speak for yourself, some of us are definitely above average >_>

avgDev 6y ago

Average Adult Will Spend 60% of Their Existence With Their Eyes Open.

scottLobster 6y ago

So a few minutes ago I wrote code for a company, producing economic value. Last night I kept up with family, maintaining healthy personal relationships. Right now I'm engaging in intellectual discussion of major issues with other people. And last night I watched an episode of Mr. Robot, engaging my brain with a stimulating story. And yes, sometimes I just look at animal gifs on imgur. I see no problem continuing any of this for 34 collective years.

gowld 6y ago
How much of that time was caring for your eye health so you don't go blind early?
- scottLobster 6y ago
  I'm 32 and needed glasses for the first time last year, just mild nearsightedness which runs in my family, and I'm actually doing better than most (my mom and sister both needed glasses as teenager). I eat healthy/exercise and use dark-mode themes where available to minimize glare. That's it's for eye health. I wonder if the negative association of eye health to screen time is less about the screens and more about high blood pressure brought on by being sedentary. High blood pressure absolutely destroys the eyes over time.
- sinity 6y ago
  You don't go blind from staring at a screen. Claims otherwise are the same as 5G conspiracy theories. Photons are photons. You might get issues from focusing at the same distance all the time. Or that theory about dopamine may be true - but if anything, screens are an improvement over things like paper books. And it applies to adolescence anyway. And nearsightedness is not anywhere near going blind.
  - shrimp_emoji 6y ago
    Bruh long axial length stretches the retina and detaches the vitreous jelly faster from the back of the eye since eye volume keeps increasing (you see this as flashes of light), putting you at risk for retinal detachment, which very much leads to blindness. :v I live in constant fear of it (though chance is smol). And I only played WoW for like 2 years .w.

fgnewsom 6y ago

GAVIN NEWSOM NEEDS TO GOTO JAIL! FUCK HIM!

mchusma 6y ago

Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite knowledge and possibility.

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
And will use that infinite potential to binge watch Friends for the 11th time.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  I'll have you know this is a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine household, and we are on our 12th rewatch of the Dominion War, tyvm.
  - pintxo 6y ago
    If Netflix ever adds Spin City to their catalogue I will be in trouble.
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Let me tell you how much productivity I got back when they took Frasier off last year.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Newsradio for this guy
      - cableshaft 6y ago
        I have a folder of the entire series of Newsradio that's been played in the background (while I do other things, I don't even watch it, just listen)... sooo many times. Corner Gas is the only other show I've played as often.
    - sergiotapia 6y ago
      watching newsradio here, with rpcs3 classics on the second monitor

volune 6y ago

The medieval peasant spent how much time staring at dirt?

groby_b 6y ago
Few of them stared at brightly glowing dirt, though. And few of them continually stared at dirt a foot or two in front of their faces. There's debate how much damage that difference causes, but pretending there's no difference is an unhelpful approach.
- throwaway8941 6y ago
  Tone down your brightness then? I use heavily customized dark themes absolutely everywhere, and my screen is hardly brighter than dirt. I have no problem looking at it for 30+ hours straight (though I don't do this anymore for other reasons.)
acituan 6y ago
Hominids spent 7 million years evolving on that "dirt" they stared at.

jliptzin 6y ago

This was already true for people I know who were watching TV all day since the 70s

nemo 6y ago

I used to spend a lot of time in book/magazine/paper reading. Now I read off screens mostly. 34 years of my life spent reading would be time well spent regardless of the medium.

derekp7 6y ago

This article is about the effects of eye strain, not the overall mental health of looking at content on a screen. With that in mind, what is it about a screen (emitted light) that is worse than outdoors reflect light? One item I can think of, is that looking at something with reflected natural light, the iris contracts based on the total amount of light hitting it. Whereas a screen may be brighter than the ambient light in the room, causing more of a point source of light to hit the retinas that would normally happen (which is why I've always found it more comfortable to watch TV with some other light on in the room vs. the room in total darkness).

1e-9 6y ago
It appears that the lack of violet light contributes to myopia[1]. There is abundant violet light outdoors. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09388-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09388-7
manmal 6y ago
Screens are optimized for energy efficiency, so their emissions are restricted to a narrow range of visible frequencies. They don’t even really cover the whole range of colors, but mix them by combining RGB, which isn’t the real thing. Eg you can make something looking like violet light by mixing blue and red, but it’s not the same thing as the „real“ violet. Sunlight, however, is a wild mix of broadband EM emissions across basically the whole spectrum, as you‘d expect from a glowing ball of plasma (halogen bulbs are actually similar in that regard, they need and do have a UV filter). About a third of the sun’s emitted energy hits the earth’s surface as near infrared light, and then there is UV etc. Near infrared light is very beneficial, the mitochondria in our cells can increase their energy output as a direct consequence of receiving photons in that frequency range. There are lots of studies that showed improvement of many health conditions following near infrared or red light therapy. I wouldn’t be surprised if NIR light helped prevent myopia too.
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
  would it help to set your screens to a grayscale setting?

econcon 6y ago

Important thing is, people don't just stare at screen. Many of them achieve smth else too. For example, last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of the word on screen. Helping them turn waste plastic into 3D printing filament: https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-cheap-6c908bb09922 https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...

acituan 6y ago
> last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of the word on screen You've spent time with a simulation of those people, their voices lossily compressed with a biased frequency response, their images projected through a non-eye lens on a 2D surface, their heads bigger and closer than you would have in real life, while rest of their bodies hidden, with hundreds of milliseconds delay between interactions. Don't get me wrong, it is a very convincing and useful simulation for many purposes, but it is a simulation nonetheless. We might have overlooked this previously, but we will slowly be gaining an understanding of the effects of sole social interaction coming through videochat. I know for some, no matter how many zoom calls they do a day, it doesn't come close to creating the same relational satiety.
- malwrar 6y ago
  Speaking personally, most of my good friendships growing up (and even now) were with people online and they feel perfectly fulfilling and real to me. I've been really surprised to hear people (who seem to have been forced into interacting with folks online because of covid) start popping up claiming that online interactions aren't real and are somehow invalid or inferior, as your post seems to imply. I would have thought the presumably largely computer geek HN crowd would be full of folks with similar experience.
  - acituan 6y ago
    > they feel perfectly fulfilling and real to me That is the whole point of a simulation. Hyper-palatable food, cocaine, porn etc. they also feel good and even hyper-real in our nervous systems in the short term, but that’s not a good way to judge if they pose long term complications. Though, I’m not saying video chat is necessarily a hyperstimulus, we don’t know yet. > claiming that online interactions aren't real and are somehow wrong I’m not saying it is wrong, and in the absence of real thing it is the rational thing to do. But thinking that it is the real thing is kidding ourselves and to the extent it replaces real life interactions, it could have long term harm. I know this is not an exact comparison, but we have already seen this with uni-directional audio-visual entertainment replacing real relationship time. We feel like our favorite youtubers, podcasters, netflix protagonists etc are our friends, or at least relationally worth investing time in (otherwise we wouldn’t consume them). Same might go with the 50 people around the world we videochat.

deleted 6y ago

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varshithr 6y ago

If you are in IT, or any knowledge worker for that matter, do we even have a choice?

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
e-ink monitors?

mr_berna 6y ago

Does staring at two screens at the same time count double? At work as an iOS developer I look at two computer monitors, an iPad screen and a phone screen. When I watch TV at night I'll look at the TV and my phone. I'm sure I can get my count really high.

XCSme 6y ago
It might actually be better, as you keep changing focus.

redsymbol 6y ago

Aaaand now I feel the sudden urge to get away from this screen and go walk through some trees. I'll see ya all later.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
I'm an ape man i'm an ape ape man no i'm an ape man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo

onion2k 6y ago

I'm happy to be above average at something at last.

mattlondon 6y ago

13 hours a day on average? That seems quite high to me. Assuming you sleep 8 hours, that only leaves 16 other hours for potential screen time of which 13 we are apparently looking at a screen. Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left. So of all of our waking hours, we spend 13/15.5 = 84% of every minute we are awake looking at a screen? 50 seconds of every 60 seconds staring at a screen? Seems high to me.

MrZander 6y ago
I can easily see myself hitting 12+ hours a day. 8 hours every day at work, then an hour of TV, then a few hours on my PC at home doing whatever. Plus, using my phone probably adds up to a decent little chunk. Weekends might drag the average down a bit though, spend much less time in front of a screen on Saturday/Sunday.
karatestomp 6y ago
I bet I'm around 12-13 hours more days than not. Maybe higher. And my phone addiction/dependence is moderate compared to some so it probably comes in a distant 3rd after laptop (easily #1) and TV (all movies, shows, and video games combined) > Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left. Laptop on the dresser/counter playing Youtube. Phones are waterproof—read news or catch up on morning messages in the shower. Laptops that aren't giant bricks and have battery life good enough that you aren't constantly hunting for an outlet and towing your power supply around, plus (even more so) smartphones, have changed everything. Also depends on how they're counting screen time. Kinda like TV-watching stats. My parents leave their living room TV on probably 15+ hours a day. Does that mean they're "watching TV" if they're making lunch (good view of the TV from the kitchen) but half paying attention to the TV? Or I've come over and we're talking but the TV's on and you (or at least I) can't entirely ignore it?
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I agree. I track my screen time on my computer and mobile phone. I feel like I have too much screen time, but there's no way I could consistently hit 13 hours of screen time per day, unless maybe I put TVs around my house to use as background viewing while I do other work. Even if I spend 10 hours at the office, it's a challenge to get over 7 hours of screen time logged unless I actively avoid all discussions, meetings, and eat lunch at my desk.

ipnon 6y ago

"If children get outside enough, it doesn't matter how much they study they do. They don't become myopic," said Ian Morgan, researcher at Australian National University.[0] "Researchers say kids and teens need to get sunlight during the critical years of their development while their eyeballs are still growing. "The mechanics of how sunlight protects their eyes are not clearly understood. One theory suggests that sunlight triggers the release of dopamine in the retina; another speculates that blue light from the sun protects from the condition. "The solution is simple. Have kids "spend more time outside, have less demands (from) the schools and relax a bit," said Seang Mei Saw, professor of epidemiology at the National University of Singapore." [0] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/05/asia/myopia-east-asia/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/05/asia/myopia-east-asia/index.h... edit: quotation marks

karatestomp 6y ago
Meanwhile we put 5-6 year olds in kindergarten classrooms with UV-blocking windows all day, for about 9 months during the part of the year with the least sunlight available, and we've cut recess time down to almost nothing, and schools increasingly don't send kids outside if the weather's anything other than perfect. At my kids' school they don't even have indoor recess if they keep them in! They just watch a damn movie. WTF. Of course there was some stupid educational fad that led them to remove all the toys from lower-grade classrooms to make room for "learning centers" (I gather this has happened more or less state-wide), so I guess if the gym's not available they can't really do indoor recess anyway, not that it helps their eyesight either way. And this is a very highly-ranked school for our state. 1.5 hours of recess daily minimum or bust for 3rd grade and under, I say, and I think that's not quite enough, really. Screw this 30 minutes crap. Know how I can guarantee my kids have behavior problems at home? Coop them up inside all day. Know how I make a day run smoothly? Make sure they're outside running around at least a couple hours while the sun's up. Then consider that they're giving a bunch of them nearsightedness on top of definitely creating behavioral and learning problems. It's crazy.
- ajmurmann 6y ago
  I think it's all a side effect of the treadmill that society is putting everyone on. Between globalization and automation there are fewer good jobs that more people are competing for. Either you end up with what used to be a lot of money or way too little. Till you "made it" you are constantly at risk at slipping off the treadmill and into the "way too little" group. Especially in the US. May this be reality or not, it's the experienced reality for many. We feel so much pressure to give our kids a head start which results in this rat race starting earlier and harder. I think this is just collateral damage from that shit going wrong. I'm so glad I was a kid in the 80s when playing outside was still normal.

patrickcteng 6y ago

So, as a child my mom always insisted on me reading with lots of lights turned on. She claimed that reading the dark causes short sightedness and etc. Now, as an adult, I find that I have my screen's brightness turned up way more than my peers. For example, although it's currently very sunny right now in LA, I have my brightness turned up 100% on my 16" MBP. Though, in the evenings, it's more comfortable at 3 or 4 steps down from 100%. I can't help but to wonder -- did she condition my eye to be less sensitive to light and have thus slightly ruined my low-light vision?

kingbirdy 6y ago
Why wouldn't you have your brightness at 100% if it was sunny? You need the backlight to be bright to avoid it being washed out by sunlight. It would be weird if you said you used 100% brightness in the dark, but that's perfectly reasonable when it's sunny.

stevebmark 6y ago

Part of how myopia works: When your peripheral vision is in focus too much, because something is close to your face like a screen, your eye (which grows on its own, without brain involvement), is told to grow longer to to help reduce the over sharpening of the world it thinks it has. This happens in developing humans, at some point in adulthood it's suspected this stops (although some people see worsening myopia past the typical age range where it stops).

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
would it help to keep your phone or monitor further away?
- stevebmark 6y ago
  Having less focus in your peripheral vision might help slow myopia progression, so possibly. However wearing glasses and contacts automatically add more focus to peripheral vision, signaling the eye to grow. So moving something further away from your face while wearing glasses or contacts may have less of an effect. Having periods of blurry vision, like looking at something far away for some time without glasses or contacts, may be beneficial in that it may signal the eye to become less football shaped to help correct for the blurriness it now is experiencing. However I haven't seen any evidence this can reverse or improve myopia, rather this just seems to slow its progression.
  - veddox 6y ago
    > Having periods of blurry vision, like looking at something far away for some time without glasses or contacts, may be beneficial in that it may signal the eye to become less football shaped to help correct for the blurriness it now is experiencing. I literally just had that yesterday, and was wondering what it was. My eyes have always been very good, but I have been a bit worried of late after a few such blurry episodes...
    - stevebmark 6y ago

rafaele 6y ago

I wonder if they count staring at "n" screens for 1 hour as "n" hours.

qubex 6y ago

The Onion was way ahead (as usual): https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-waking-hours-spent-staring-at-glowing-re-1819570829 https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-waking-hours-spent-sta...

Ididntdothis 6y ago

Just my personal experience: i definitely notice my eyesight getting worse and my eyes getting tired when I look at screens for a while. Worst are phones , then iPad , then laptop. TV causes me the least strain. I think it may have to do with the viewing distance or the background light. When I don’t look at a screen for a few days while on vacation my eyesight gets much better.

jedberg 6y ago

Protip for everyone, since I've done a lot of research on this: If at all possible, cut the blue from your screen at all times. I use flu.x [0] and even during the day I set my color temp to 5800K instead of the standard 6500K. You won't notice the change much, but it will make a huge difference on how tired your eyes get. I also go down to 1850K at night (candlelight basically) to both ease strain on my eyes and not mess up my sleep. It makes a noticeable difference. [0] https://justgetflux.com https://justgetflux.com

nsilvestri 6y ago
I've had sunset-synchronized f.lux/redshift for 7 or 8 years now. Turning on redshift during work revealed I had pavlovian conditioned myself into getting sleepy when the blue light goes away.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Hah! Never thought about that side effect. I did both at the same time so never experienced that. Good to know.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
I set mine to 3800K for 24 hours a day. Even during the day under florescent lights and an open window, if I have to toggle it off for any reason it feels like my eyes are being stabbed with tiny knives. I don't know about the sleep stuff (is that hard science yet?) but I personally definitely staved off eye strain and dry eye issues with f.lux and no other changes.
- jedberg 6y ago
  > I set mine to 3800K for 24 hours a day. Sometimes when I travel to the other side of the planet but don't update my laptop clock, it goes into "night mode" midday. I can use it but I find it jarring with the natural light. > I don't know about the sleep stuff (is that hard science yet?) They have links to studies on the flux page [0] although I'm not sure how much of that is peer reviewed or if the sample sizes are big enough. I know that it makes a difference for me. My sleep quality went way up when I started using flux, and it goes down when I look at screens without it too late at night (like my not-so-smart-TV). [0] https://justgetflux.com/research.html https://justgetflux.com/research.html

jrochkind1 6y ago

Oh, I can totally beat that and do way more than 34 years.

ttizya20 6y ago

phd's will spend 5 years starring at paper

aupchurch 6y ago

These stats always freak me out when you extrapolate it over the long term. The average adult will also spend 2 years commuting or an entire year of their life sitting on the toilet. Lot's of wasted time here people. I think this also shows the power of what we can accomplish by spending 10 minutes a day doing something.

maerF0x0 6y ago
It can be quite difficult to convert random time savings into valuable time. 1) Is marginal free time actually converted to value (eg, Quality study time vs TikTok infinite scrolling) 2) Can Marginal free time be chained into valuable blocks (saving 1 minute commuting such that you're 2 more minute earl y for 30 appointments, you cannot chain that into a 1 hour study block. Edit: I will say Ankidroid has helped me get some value out of random deadspace though.
woobar 6y ago
If they sit on the toilet while staring at the screen, what bucket these years are assigned to? I.e. these extrapolations could result in multiples of your lifespan.
kazen44 6y ago
why would spending time on the toilet be wasted time? actually, sometimes, doing practically nothing is very valuable for one's state of mind.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I’d avoid the toilet simply due to avoid increasing risk of hemorrhoids.

nbj914 6y ago

seems low

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago

Some good tips to prevent myopia: - 30/30/30 rule: Every 30 minutes look at something 30 feet away for 30 seconds - Take regular walks outside: it will lower your blood pressure, and expose your eyes to violet light - ensure brightness of environment closely matches brightness of screen to prevent eye strain

napster4lyfe 6y ago

time well spent, imo

ashleshbiradar 6y ago

"screen time" is too broad a term and is too often described as something bad. But we need to understand screens are more like papers, and what we consume off the paper is what matters.

austinshea 6y ago

Staring is an embarrassing word for this person to have imposed upon the actual study. Science journalism is a real problem.

JSavageOne 6y ago

Eye strain is a serious problem and actually becoming a bottleneck for my productivity. Flux and dark-mode everything are mandatory, and I recently bought blue-light filter glasses and can't stare at a computer screen without them anymore. I had been reading ebooks on my phone out of convenience, but I stopped due to the eye strain and will revert back to using the Kindle. If you spend the majority of your life staring at a screen, don't take your eyesight for granted. As you age, it will deteriorate, and it's really not fun, especially when your career/livelihood depends on you being in front of a screen.

hrktb 6y ago
I think we are all in the same boat. For me switching from reading to hearing wherever the option makes sense helped a lot. Basic news coverage is fine in podcast form, audiobooks work fine for non fiction (going at 2x or 3x speed doesn’t kill the atmosphere) and it makes a good excuse to exercise while listening.

ryeguy_24 6y ago

Haven't we also gained 34 years in longevity in the last 100 years? So, net net we are good? :) More seriously, what types of activities did screens replace? Was it talking to other people? Physical activities/labor? Reading? Nothing?

srl 6y ago
I know your first comment is mainly in jest, but... https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-expectancy-united-states/ https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-... For white folk in the US, even the life expectancy at birth (arguably an inflated metric) hasn't increased by 34 years since 1900. For all people in the US (basically everywhere else, too, I think), that ~30-40 years is dominated by infant/youth mortality getting driven hard towards 0.

matthewfelgate 6y ago

We spend 34 years of our lives staring at computer screens. The rest of the time is just wasted.

standardUser 6y ago
Those sound like the first lines of a movie I would watch.

sunstone 6y ago

Formerly the average adult spent 34 years staring at text on the printed page.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

Pfft. Amateurs.

jayroh 6y ago

Ugh, I did not need to see this today :(

scollet 6y ago
Ironic

abstractbarista 6y ago

Good thing I started out super far-sighted. If anything, my vision has improved with time focusing on close screens. :P

ngcc_hk 6y ago

Collecting info, react to info, organise info, communicate info etc. Otherwise might as well say we look for our life. It is not staring at. It is something else.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Can we quantify the "net screen time" once we subtract away from activities that took up time but have since been replaced/optimized by automation? But leaving that aside, the 34 years figure is understating the true time spent. That figure is referring to 34 years of 24-hour days. If we subtract 8 hours a day for sleep, it is actually 52 years of our waking hours.

OMGCable 6y ago

I read this, and wanted to put my phone down. I failed.

deleted 6y ago

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golemotron 6y ago

I don't think that's true. Eventually, we'll have implants.

KerryJones 6y ago

While this article touches on eyesight, it seems like it's quite a myopic view of the issue (see what I did there? ;) But seriously, we spend over half of our "healthy years" staring at a screen? This should be begging deep philosophical questions - How do you want to spend your life? - When you look back at your life, how do you want to have used your time? - What is important to you? Some questions I struggled with when I went on a sabbatical was "what makes me feel alive, really alive?" Ironically, my answer for many months was, "I don't know, but it's not staring at a screen." Many other people's answered things like "rock climbing", "sky diving", "going dancing", and I think those are pretty decent answers, but mine settled on "anything that makes me grow". I also thoroughly spending time with other people in real human-to-human interaction. This feels like a huge slap-in-the-face wakeup call.

Arbalest 6y ago
A big component is surely from work. In which case, how does the philosophy extend to take into account the fact that people are in offices working?
- sexy_seedbox 6y ago
  We'll all be healthier after Capitalism collapses.
- KerryJones 6y ago
  Yeah, I think this is an important question. I think some of it will be inevitable, but I don't think we focus much on "decreasing screen time"... when so many companies (facebook, google, et al) get money from people spending more time on screens (advertising). There's no incentive for corporations to spend less time looking at screens. The few companies that do promote that -- such as REI... are outdoor companies. Which could lead you to a really pessimistic thought that even the co-op companies are really just profit motivated (I don't believe this, but there is the correlation)

pknerd 6y ago

And programmers?

etxm 6y ago

That fucking sucks.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago

has anyone seen endmyopia.org? a friend of mine suggested it because he said he was able to perform “eye exercises” to improve his eyesight. He said it wasn’t perfect, but he no longer needs glasses.

Azametzin 6y ago
I just created an account just to answer you. Yes, endmyopia.org is great. The same way we develop myopia, we can revert it naturally in 99% of the cases. I was really skeptic at the beginning, but if you participare in the forum, read a lot and follow thousands of people taking part of the process, you will belive it for sure.

sizzle 6y ago

If the average adult spend 34 years staring at screens, what would us tech workers average?!

throwaway9482 6y ago

Average adult will spend 31 years of their life lying on the bed If we want to be pessimistic and reductionist there’s many other ways to do this too

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

OP: "Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens" Comment: "And for 33.9 of those years, it will be at things that are not work related..."

ycombinete 6y ago
I'm not sure about you, but 6-8 of those 13 hours of my day are spent working.

rurban 6y ago

Better than staring in books as before. Imagine the bok giving feedback to you or allowing communication.

yosito 6y ago

I've spent 34 years staring at screens since February.

deg4uss3r 6y ago

If this was "Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at books" would that also be a bad thing? To me and my work/reaserch/fun it's the same...

mvkel 6y ago

100 years ago the average adult (who dealt with information as we do today) probably spent 25 years of their life staring at paper. It’s the content, not the medium, that matters.